BlackmanVision Film Production

I am so sad that Lena Horne has died. I somehow thought she would always be a part of the landscape, getting older and still looking fabulous, but she had a long run and 92 is a good age to cross over to the other side. Many years ago I pitched making a documentary about her to terrestrial broadcaster. She was of no significance to the Commissioning Editor. It is heartening to know that she was however valued by other people. While doing extensive research on her I learned:

• She got married in a black dress.
• The song Stormy Weather from the movie of the same name, was spliced into the movie so it could be easily spliced out, so as not to offend cinema audiences in the Southern states of the USA.
• Her family was friendly with Paul Robeson and supported him financially. That association with Robeson who was a Communist, caused her to be blacklisted in 1950.
• She described composer Billy Strayhorn who was openy gay as her “soulmate’ and slept with his photo by her bed.
• As she was *too light-skinned* to play a maid, Max Factor invented a make up to darken her called Light Egyptian, which was then used on Ava Gardner to play a *mulatto* in the movie Showboat.
• Many other Black actors thought she was making trouble, and would lose them income, when she complained about the demeaning of roles they were given. Hattie McDaniel had a more pragmatic approach – “I’d rather play a maid and make $700 a week, than be a maid for $7.”
• She sang “Now,” at a Carnegie Hall benefit for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee a Black Power organization in 1963. It became her first hit.

Kobena Mercer in Welcome to the Jungle introduced the notion of ethnic androgyny to describe Michael Jackson’s paling of his skin and re-shaping his nose. Mercer explores the idea that Michael Jackson changed his skin colour not to be white, but to be a light-skinned Black man. Jackson’s whole remodelling of his hair, face and skin was to make him more lovable and marketable to a wider audience.  Did Jackson believe it was easier to sell himself more successfully as ethnically androgynous than ethnically unambiguous to a  global pop audience? The pop charts are not usually dominated by dark skinned Black men.

People who say he was trying to be white are missing the point entirely and have very little understanding of African descent cultures and the complex relationship to pigmentocracy in the New World. Within African American and Caribbean cultures what is often valued and considered attractive is never white skin but light skin, and hair with the African kink taken out. The so-called desire for people of colour to be white remains a white pre-occupation.

In addition Michael Jackson looked increasingly more gender androgynous as time went by. His maleness disappearing underneath wigs, red lipstick and a made up face. His eyes more wide open and doe like through surgery. He began to look like a mutant version of Diana Ross on whom it was rumoured he modelled his look. This “look” did not and does not hamper record sales. However had he been a hip hop star his career would have sank without a trace.

It has been reported that Joe Jackson, Michael’s father repeatedly told Michael he was ugly, his nose was too big. In addition Michael reported that his brothers also teased him. This form of abuse on top of the physical punishment Michael experienced must have had an effect on Michael’s psyche. So in addition to being incredible driven, he must have also been full of self loathing and doubts about his own enormous talents. It is interesting that the entire family has changed their noses through surgery.

Michael also looked and acted like an effeminate boy and and later man. I am almost certain that this was unsettling to his apparently seeming macho father and teenage brothers.

The tragedy of Michael Jackson to me represents a failure of some African Caribbean/American parents to accept a different kind of masculinity in their sons, other than the posturing posing plastic hypermasculinity now almost compulsory and ubiquitous in African descent culture.

Would Michael Jackson still be alive if he had the strength to be like Prince or Little Richard and just accept who he was – a wonderful effeminate, made-up dandy boy?

We said goodbye to Earth Kitt this Thursday. She was 81 and wonderful.

Let’s gloss over the performances in apartheid South Africa during the cultural boycott. She was blacklisted for speaking out against the Vietnam war. And created the iconic Catwoman. Orson Welles describe her as “the most exciting woman in the world.”

She will be missed. Here s a video of her singing I Want to Be Evil.